The Competing Needs of a Cowboy Biker

Balancing the wanderlust of a gypsy Cowboy Biker with the work of living... and the many great and treasured chunks of life is a formidable task for someone as lazy as I am.

Precious Friends whose absence leaves an aching hole in me, my writing and publishing, my Grandkids, my leather craft and even Horses! ... All are personal Treasures competing for a place. Some surely fit together and overlap, some stand alone... but the permanent and total loss of any is unthinkable...

I even tormented over the order they should be placed in the sentence!

... but, stretching out in front of me, remains that road that has no mercy... its whispers are relentless... its call I cannot leave unanswered...

Yet, to remain on the road, to preserve this life that I've come to Love, I increasingly see a burdensome reality. To sustain my gypsy life, I may have to choose to have less of it. It is in my mind analogous, somewhat pompously considering the contexts, to a line from the movie Gettysburg;

General Lee was speaking to General Longstreet before the worst of the battle;
"Soldiering has one great trap; To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.

To wander... you must love the road. To sustain your wandering life, you must often push away from and leave behind the thing you love.

Few can produce a living, from the simple act of BEING a wanderer... They find they have to leave the road for periods of indentured servitude, contracting either their bodies or their intellect, or both,  to produce the dinero required to finance their rambling.

It's akin to owning a horse. If you're going to live with the spiritual fulfillment the animal gives, you must accept that you'll regularly have to shovel some shit.

The trick is to manage your life so the things you love... don't get buried under the horse shit.

Grab Your Handles and Ride
Brian